Historically, wind turbines have been very small contributors to overall power generation to supply electrical grids. The low unit ratings (<100 kW) and the uncertain availability of wind sources caused wind turbine generators affect negligible when power grid operators considered the security of the grid. However, wind turbine generators with ratings of 1.5 MW or more are now available. Furthermore, many power generation developers are installing wind farms having one hundred or more wind turbine generators. The “block” of power available from wind farms with 1.5 MW wind turbine generators is comparable to a modem gas turbine generator. Accordingly, wind turbine generators are increasingly feasible sources of power for the power grid.
One requirement for efficient power production in a wind farm is collection of data. Current data collection systems are typically based upon a continuously functioning single central data collection architecture with limited capability for intelligent processing and storage of data at each wind turbine, meteorological mast or at the substation. This type of architecture is susceptible to the central data collecting system failing to store and archive the data being produced by the devices in the wind farm if faults occur in the wind farm network infrastructure. For example, the loss of the connectivity between the supervisory command and data acquisition (SCADA) master device and wind turbines could result in loss of operational data and fault records from the wind turbines.